By Jaclyn Geller and John Coulter 

In his 1974 novel, My Life as a Man, Philip Roth describes the postwar bias against unmarried American males.  A man who rejected wedlock "laid himself open to the charge of 'immaturity,' if not 'latent' or 'blatant' homosexuality.  Or he was just plain 'selfish.'  Or he was 'frightened of responsibility.'  Or he could not 'commit himself' (nice institutional phrase, that) to a 'permanent relationship.'"  Indeed, during the 1950s, when the median American male age for marriage was 23, men were expected to wed and support women as part of a natural maturation process.  A cadre of Freudian advisors buttressed this popular view.  H.A. Overstreet's 1950 study, The Mature Mind, states, "a man is immature if he regards the support of a family as a kind of trap." In 1953 the psychologist R.J. Havighurst named marrying and raising children as one of the seven prerequisites for mature adulthood. 

Social historian Barbara Ehrenreich has shown how, by the late 1970s, masculine adulthood was no longer defined solely in terms of marriage and breadwinning and the loosening of these social restrictions gave rise to backlash.  Pro-marriage organizations proliferated, taking as their targets the Equal Rights Amendment, the increased availability of contraception, men who shirked wedlock to pursue their own pleasures, and those putatively foolish women who allowed them to do so in the name of social equality.  A pamphlet from the anti-ERA League of Housewives averred "the right of the woman to be a full-time wife and mother, and to have this right recognized by laws that obligate her husband to provide the primary financial support and home for her and her children…" For such women feminists had betrayed their own gender by insisting on economic parity and accepting consensual sex outside of wedlock.  Phyllis Schlafly, author of The Power of the Positive Woman, summed it up.  Proponents of equal pay for equal work were basically saying, "Boys, supporting your wives isn't your responsibility anymore," so men "would no longer see it as their duty."  Pro-family activist Onalee McGraw concurred, lamenting, in a 1982 interview, "The man is not responsible anymore."  She blamed the human potential movement: "It's the whole me-decade thing…humanistic psychology," she explained: "…men are taking advantage of the situation."
   
It is interesting to look back on these reactionary voices from the vantage point of the early 21st  century and ask ourselves if attacks on unmarried men have become any less rebarbative.  It is still common for self-help "experts" to condemn bachelors, suggesting that only males who "commit" to a spouse are mature, fully realized beings.   In their 1987 New York Times bestseller, Men Who Can't Love, Steven Carter and Julia Sokol claim that male commitment-phobia is "destroying the fabric of our society."  In his 2005 bestseller, Love Smart: Find the One You Want and Fix the One You've Got, popular psychologist Phil McGraw urges women to confront their marriage-phobic partners, citing the Marriage Study performed at Rutgers University, which reports that contemporary men won't marry for ten distinct reasons (topping the list are the availability of sex without legal commitment; the option of cohabitation; and the desire to avoid a costly divorce). The "normal guy" is receptive to becoming betrothed, claim Doctors Peter and Stewart Kandel, in their 2005 manual, Get Your Man Through Hypnosis. In their 2006 primer, Closing the Deal: Two Married Guys Reveal the Dirty Truth to Getting Your Man to Commit, Richard Kirshenbaum and David Rosenberg urge female readers to "cut bait" with any derelict suitor who has dated for a year without proposing marriage.
   
Wedlock's tangible and intangible benefits are withheld from unmarried women and men, but the ways in which the two genders are stigmatized tends to differ. While the unwed woman might be scorned as impractical or unlucky, her male counterpart is often labeled as childish. 

Anecdotally, one might examine the experience of the authors of this essay, two friends who live in disparate parts of the country.
      
An investment advisor and resident of Snowmass Colorado, John Coulter tends to analyze situations economically.  To him remaining unmarried has been a logical choice in light of the costs versus the benefits.  The costs are his autonomy and his social and sexual freedom. The benefits have never been quite clear; he considers it imprudent to cement a relationship legally in a way that would make it difficult for either party to exit if insurmountable conflicts arose. To pursue a passion for skiing, John packed his car at age 19 and drove to Colorado from his home in Pennsylvania.   In the intervening 30 years he held jobs in numerous industries including earthmoving, logging, and oil drilling; for 12 of those years he lived outdoors in a tipi. Eventually he became certified as a financial planner; he now lives indoors and divides his time between his clients and his work as Snowmass' Director of Avalanche Control. If it has not been conventional, neither has his path been puerile.  Yet, he is often tarred with the "Peter Pan" label.  He works, pays his bills, feeds his dog, and enjoys his life.  And he wonders, what more, according to the "experts," does he owe society – especially a society already overpopulated?

Jaclyn Geller also packed and moved, from New York City to New England, three years ago.  An English professor and author, Jaclyn leans toward historical analysis.  She has opted not to marry because she finds wedlock's sexist legacy to be problematic. As well, she has not wanted the government's seal of approval on her personal life, and she would be uncomfortable elevating one relationship above all others, having enjoyed so many meaningful friendships over the years.  Being anti-marriage, she feels, is not tantamount to being anti-men or anti-love.  Rather, it means supporting autonomy, love, friendship, and community. 

Although she has brooked the standard nuptial pressures, Jaclyn has also felt encouraged.  In her new hometown, West Hartford, Connecticut, she has met many unmarried women who are thriving: several of her fellow professors, her downstairs neighbor, her hair stylist, and the owner and chef of her favorite local restaurant, fall unto this category.  Some of these ladies live alone; others live communally. Some are peacefully celibate; others enjoy amorous partnerships.  When women like this meet they exchange anecdotes, discuss the pleasures of unmarried life, and cheer each other on. They are encouraged by recent publications, like Eve Kay Trimberger's monograph, The New Single Woman, and like Jaclyn's own 2001 study, Here Comes the Bride.  And they enjoy the support of associations like the Single Working Women's Affiliate Network, which recently celebrated Single Working Women's Week.

For unmarried males, at this point, the path may be lonelier.  It is important to recognize that their social status does not represent a psychiatric condition.  The Diagnostic Statistical Manual, the mental health field's primary clinical guide, does not list "Peter Pan Syndrome" as a disorder; indeed no such phobia exists.  For modern men, marrying has often entailed shouldering lifelong financial responsibility for several other people.  Feeling daunted by this prospect is understandable, as is the desire to preserve one's privacy, to enjoy an uncoupled identity, or to cohabit without governmental regulations.  Luckily, the Alternatives to Marriage Project, which represents both men and women, validates these choices and continues its work on behalf of the unmarried.
     
Jaclyn Geller is an assistant professor in the English Department at Central Connecticut State University, and is the author of Here Comes the Bride: Women, Weddings, and the Marriage Mystique. John Coulter is an investment advisor and the Director of Avalanche Control for Snowmass, Colorado.